Salty entrepreneur Bower enjoying the spices of life

Clint Bower jokes that he’s got a Ph.D. in talking.

But at 69, it’s no joke that this lifelong entrepreneur and former Coast Guard service member is much more than a salty dog.

He thinks he just might have struck gold.

That’s gold, spelled NaCl.

Yeah, salt. Ocean Gourmet Salts from the Pacific, to be specific.

“Welcome to Salt Central,” he said with a sweep of his arm as he admitted a pair of journalists to his Rathdrum lair. The facility houses his office — the same office where Bower has overseen his longtime molding and millwork business, as well as his great-idea-that-maybe-wasn’t-quite-so-great, the Space Cadet gardening tool he invented a few years ago.

Space Cadet’s failure to launch peppered no salt into this old sailor’s wound, however. When you’re as busy as Bower is, there’s no time to lament. In fact, sometimes something better comes along, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Some of the wonderful things that happen to people happen by accident,” he said.

It was no accident that Bower ended up in Green Bay for a Veterans Day Packers game in November 2011. But the fact that he ended up dining at a steakhouse using applewood smoked salt was delightfully accidental.

Bower and his wife, Cheryl, loved that salt. Confessed foodies, they looked it up online so it could continue to caress their culinary cravings.

“We just loved it on all sorts of things,” Bower said with what looked like an inadvertent lip-smack.

But then, their holy grail of the salt kingdom disappeared. No longer online; no longer anywhere.

The quest began.

Bower took to researching salts on the Internet like his life, not his taste buds, depended upon it. The more he learned, the more a new light dawned on him.

“Cheryl and I were talking about getting a little more retired, but I said I need something to do,” he said.

He started by getting salt samples from all over the world. The more he sampled, the more opportunity he saw.

“The whole idea was, maybe we should get into the gourmet salt business and have a little fun,” he said.

The Bowers’ favorite salt samples came from Hawaii, and after repeated communications with that company’s sales director in California, the Bowers began buying in bulk.

Their six flavors arrive in 40-pound tubs. After receiving a permit from Panhandle Health District, the Bowers and a friend use a commercial kitchen nearby to repackage the product in neat little packets. They’ve rebranded the spices, too, and now sell them under the names of Cyprus Lemon, Hawaiian Lemon Pepper, Northwest Rub, Maui Onion, Smoked Cherry and Smoked Alder.

While Bower hasn’t invested heavily in marketing, Ocean Gourmet Salts has an e-commerce friendly website (oceangourmetsalts.com). A third party manages the transactions, sending order information and shipping labels to the Bowers in exchange for 3 percent of invoice. But for the most part, Bower uses his PhD to get word — and product — distributed.

“He didn’t have to talk us into it,” said Jennifer Palm, owner of Fisherman’s Market & Grill in Coeur d’Alene. “It’s a local thing and I love to have local products.”

Palm said she already knew the Bowers and pointed out that her store is adorned with beautiful wooden coat racks and reader boards that Boyer custom-made for them.

Fisherman’s Market isn’t the only local retailer that sells Bower’s salts, but he bragged that they sell the most.

Tiffany Wallace is a customer who heard of the spices about a year ago.

“We had some friends who had purchased them,” she said. “We thought we’d give them a try. The ones we tried were pretty good.”

While the Wallaces like the product, they’re also pleased that Bower is donating 10 percent of all sales to Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“I think that’s a great idea,” said Wallace, an administrative assistant who lives in Coeur d’Alene. “I wish more companies would do things like that.”

Meanwhile, Bower understands he probably hasn’t stumbled on a get-rich-quick scheme. That was never his intent anyway.

“My goal is to stay active, physically and mentally,” he said. “I still have a lot of energy and enthusiasm.”

It took a mere eight months or so to turn a profit, he said, and there’s never been a need to tap into their savings to pay any bills.

“You wouldn’t go ‘ka-ching, ka-ching,’” Bower said of the profit, “but we have a handle on our overhead and it’s going well.”

Now focusing on gift baskets for real estate and other industries, Bower admits that bigger paydays might lie ahead — not just for the Bowers, but for Make-A-Wish.

“If this thing takes off the way we hope it takes off, it could generate some significant money,” he said.

But he keeps everything on an even keel.

“Entrepreneurs, sometimes they come up with ideas that don’t fly, but sometimes they hit home runs,” he said mixed-metaphorically. “What matters is that I’m having fun.”